Buying Time. Thomas F. McDow
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Buying Time
NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES
SERIES EDITORS: JEAN ALLMAN, ALLEN ISAACMAN, AND DEREK R. PETERSON
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Jacob A. Tropp, Natures of Colonial Change
Jan Bender Shetler, Imagining Serengeti
Cheikh Anta Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad
Marc Epprecht, Heterosexual Africa?
Marissa J. Moorman, Intonations
Karen E. Flint, Healing Traditions
Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola, editors, Recasting the Past
Moses E. Ochonu, Colonial Meltdown
Emily S. Burrill, Richard L. Roberts, and Elizabeth Thornberry, editors, Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa
Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets
Emily Lynn Osborn, Our New Husbands Are Here
Robert Trent Vinson, The Americans Are Coming!
James R. Brennan, Taifa
Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, editors, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake
David M. Gordon, Invisible Agents
Allen F. Isaacman and Barbara S. Isaacman, Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development
Stephanie Newell, The Power to Name
Gibril R. Cole, The Krio of West Africa
Matthew M. Heaton, Black Skin, White Coats
Meredith Terretta, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence
Paolo Israel, In Step with the Times
Michelle R. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries
Abosede A. George, Making Modern Girls
Alicia C. Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Conjugal Rights
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Emily S. Burrill, States of Marriage
Todd Cleveland, Diamonds in the Rough
Carina E. Ray, Crossing the Color Line
Sarah Van Beurden, Authentically African
Giacomo Macola, The Gun in Central Africa
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Julie MacArthur, Cartography and the Political Imagination
Abou B. Bamba, African Miracle, African Mirage
Daniel Magaziner, The Art of Life in South Africa
Paul Ocobock, An Uncertain Age
Keren Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders
Nuno Domingos, Football and Colonialism
Jeffrey S. Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism
Bianca Murillo, Market Encounters
Laura Fair, Reel Pleasures
Thomas F. McDow, Buying Time
Jon Soske, Internal Frontiers
Buying Time
Debt and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean
Thomas F. McDow
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2018 by Ohio University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McDow, Thomas F., 1970– author.
Title: Buying time : debt and mobility in the western Indian Ocean / Thomas F. McDow.
Other titles: New African histories series.
Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2018. | Series: New African Histories | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017061019| ISBN 9780821422816 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821422823 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821446096 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Indian Ocean Region—Commerce—History—19th century. | Africa, Eastern—Commerce—History—19th century. | Africa, Eastern—Civilization—Oriental influences. | Credit—Indian Ocean Region—History—19th century. | Credit—Africa, Eastern—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC DT365.65 .M33 2018 | DDC 967.601—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061019
Contents
Note on Terms, Translation, and Transliteration
Introduction. Temporizing across the Indian Ocean
Chapter 1. Drought and New Mobilities in the Omani Interior
Chapter 2. The Customs Master and Customs of Credit in Zanzibar
Chapter 3. Sultans at Sea: Mobility and the Omani States
Chapter 4. Halwa and Identity in the Western Indian Ocean World
Chapter 5. Tippu Tip’s Kin, from Oman to the Eastern Congo
Chapter 6. Freed Slaves: Manumission and Mobility before 1873